Sunday, February 15, 2009

I just discovered that my old university (Warwick, in the UK) now has an atheist society. It's a shame I left Warwick before this happened, but I'll do my bit now and give them a little publicity here. This is from their main page:

What’s the point in joining an atheist society? If God exists you are moving in the wrong direction and if God doesn’t exist then you are surely wasting your time!

Unfortunately, what other people believe also affects your life and the way in which you live it. If an individual believes something about the world that isn’t true and ends up impinging on the lives of everyone else then suddenly we have a problem.

What if vital medical research that could go a long way to curing a host of ghastly diseases is being held back? What if a deadly sexually transmitted virus is left to run rampant in the third world because people are taught that contraception is wrong? What if people, caught up too heavily in archaic mythology, turn against their neighbours and call for violence in the streets? And what if the cause of each of these atrocities is indeed a mistruth that is drilled into children from an early age, who are promised punishment for alternative thought?

You don’t have to be a rampant atheist (or an atheist at all) to think that these negative effects of various religions must be stopped.

They also have a forum. If you're a member and have stumbled across this blog, leave a comment!